


Psychic Self-Defense

by DameRuth



Series: Bliss [6]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Multi, Rose doesn't know her own strength
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24443764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Post-"Link," Jack decides to give Rose a few necessary pointers.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Bliss [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14078
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Psychic Self-Defense

**Author's Note:**

> A little moment with team TARDIS that expands on the nature of the link (and psionics in general as they function in the Bliss!verse); also provides a little groundwork for Things To Come.
> 
> [Continuing to transport over my Teaspoon content - original posting date 2007.09.08]

“All right, class” Jack said, rubbing the palms of his hands together. “Today’s topic is psychic self-defense.”  
  
The class — well, Rose — gave him a cheeky grin, and asked, “So, you’re, like, my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher now?”  
  
They were in the control room, following their shower, and breakfast. It had turned into a pleasantly lazy morning, with all of them savoring the blessed lack of tension that followed their acceptance on the link the night before. The level of prickly, unresolved friction the nascent link had generated had been considerable, but none of them -- not even the Doctor -- had realized the degree of it because it had been so constant. Now, with the tension gone, they could tell exactly how on edge they’d been.  
  
Still, one could only be lazy so long (at least, if one happened to be a member of the TARDIS crew) before the desire to be up and moving kicked in, so here they were, getting ready for a new day, and new adventures. Though, admittedly, Rose was still in her socks, not having gotten around to putting on shoes yet, and the Doctor was still working on one last cup of tea while running through the TARDIS’s daily diagnostic checks one-handed, so nobody was quite in full adventuring mode _just_ yet.  
  
Rose obviously expected a response to her quip, and Jack could hear the Doctor’s faint snort of amusement behind him. However, it made no sense to Jack — probably a 21st century in-joke.  
  
“Sorry, don’t get the reference,” he told her.  
  
“You don’t?” She looked genuinely startled, then smiled again. “We’ll have to fix that, I know where the books are in the Library . . .”  
  
She started to turn, clearly ready to go bouncing off towards the Library immediately, but Jack caught her arm.  
  
“Later, I promise — but this is important. The link broke open all our shields last night, and you and I are still wide open. That’s dangerous, the way we travel around . . .”  
  
“He’s right,” the Doctor said, walking over to join them, balancing the fragile cup and saucer with a one-handed delicacy that seemed out of place with his somber, leather-jacketed appearance. The contrast was, Jack thought, more than a little cute — though he knew he’d be facing a serious case of Godlike Wrath if he ever said so out loud. The Oncoming Storm, in a tempest over a teacup.  
  
Jack bit his lip to keep from grinning, and tried to tamp down his portion of the empathic link so his amusement wouldn’t bleed over too “loudly.” That was going to take some practice, too. Sharing was one thing, but broadcasting openly on a constant basis was likely to get distracting, for all of them. Fortunately, the Doctor was mostly paying attention to Rose, and she to him.  
  
The Doctor took a dainty sip of tea, and continued, “Voldemort’s out there, Rose. The Universe isn’t a safe place — you should know that by now.”  
  
A little miffed, she shot back, “Yeah, I had that figured, thanks. But — I dunno, I don’t _feel_ any different, not like there’s any big holes in me or anything . . .”  
  
Jack formed a mental fist and gave a light shove at the weak spot he could sense in Rose’s mental shields, where the link fed through. It was nothing much, the equivalent of a light shove on her shoulder, but her eyes widened and she squeaked in surprise.  
  
“What was that?” she asked, obviously a little shaken, looking back and forth between Jack and the Doctor.  
  
“That was me,” Jack told her, “and I wouldn’t have been able to do that to you yesterday. Most people who aren’t psychically active have tight natural shields — it’s reflexive, like learning to filter out background noises when you’re in a crowd. But you’ve had a nice, big hole punched through, right . . . about . . . here . . .”  
  
He felt for the edges of the break with a light psi probe, they way he’d use his hands to feel gently around a potentially broken bone.  
  
Rose yelped, and jumped backwards physically a few feet — not an uncommon response from someone unused to psi sensations. Her surprise sent a bright pulse of lemon-yellow down the empathic link. More unexpectedly, she followed up with a creditable psionic slap in return. “Stop that!” She was thoroughly rattled. “Yeah, okay, I’ve got holes in me!”  
  
Jack jerked back from the slap. He hadn’t been applying anything like enough pressure to cause pain, he knew. Rose was responding negatively to the sheer strangeness of the sensations. “Not bad — good instincts. Think you could do that again?”  
  
Rose blinked, and steadied as she considered. She frowned with an inward-searching expression, then her gaze focused again on Jack, and he felt a delicate mental shove against his shields.  
  
“Like that?” Rose asked uncertainly.  
  
“Just like that!” Jack told her, pleased. This was going to go more quickly than he’d hoped — most people took much longer to find their psychic feet, as it were.  
  
However, Rose’s little shove highlighted that Jack’s own shields weren’t quite up to par — they “gave” far more under Rose’s light pressure than they should have. Still, that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing — if Rose could follow along while he reconstructed his shields, it would help her understand how to manage her own.  
  
Jack could have gone for a ground—up reconstruction (and Rose would have to learn that, eventually), but there were faster ways to patch things up, if one had assistance.  
  
“Doc, if you’ll help me with my shields, and help Rose follow along . . .?” he asked.  
  
The Doctor raised his eyebrows at the abbreviation of his name . . . but, for once, didn’t correct Jack, allowing the familiarity. The Time Lord had taken up a resting position with one hip leaning against the edge of the control panel, but he pushed off and moved to set his cup and saucer carefully on the jump seat.  
  
Rose watched them both, clearly uncertain what she needed to do.  
  
The Doctor gave her a reassuring smile, and reached up to brush her cheek affectionately with his fingertips. “It’ll be easier for you to see this if we’re in telepathic contact. That all right?”  
  
“’Course it is,” Rose told him with a smile, her portion of the link radiating a trusting pulse of color and affection.  
  
The Doctor carefully placed his fingertips along her temples and jawline, then leaned forward and brushed a light kiss across her lips. When he straightened, Rose looked up at him and giggled as they slipped into a light rapport.  
  
“You didn’t need to do that,” she said, grinning with realization. “All you need’s the fingertip contact. You didn’t _need_ to do it last night, either . . .”  
  
Jack grinned, too, not bothering to damp down his feelings this time.  
  
The Doctor sent a ( _grumph!_ ) feeling down the link, and said aloud, “There’s need and there’s need . . . now hush, and watch. No, don’t look at him, it’s not about vision. Look at me with your eyes, and over _there_ with your mind. Good . . . whenever you’re ready, Captain.”  
  
“Right. Remember our hand-to-hand sessions, Rose?”  
  
Very shortly after joining the crew, Jack had started teaching Rose some fundamentals of physical self-defense. He'd been frankly a little shocked the Doctor hadn’t thought to give Rose any such training — but when he thought about it, it did tally with the Doctor’s character. For someone who ended up in the thick of things every five minutes, the Doctor wasn’t particularly good about precautionary forethought.  
  
The Doctor had grudgingly agreed to the lessons, seeing the logic of it when Jack had argued his case . . . and his approval became less grudging when he saw that Jack was serious and not just looking for opportunities to be in close physical contact with Rose.  
  
Rose was probably the most dubious of all of them, despite Jack’s assurances that leverage and skill were at least as important as size and brute strength. She approached the lessons tentatively . . . until the first day she’d gotten her balance and leverage correct, and chucked Jack halfway across the room — to her surprise, if not his.  
  
After that, Rose was hugely enthusiastic, and Jack found what started out to be a crash course in basic techniques expanding into a more general survey of martial arts. Even the Doctor, who regularly attended their sessions, finally left his supervisory position (leaning against the wall of the small, dojo-like room the TARDIS supplied), and gave occasional pointers -- including the locations of a few nerve pressure points Jack hadn’t even heard of, but which were impressively effective.  
  
Now, Jack was doubly glad for those training sessions — it would provide a useful comparative vocabulary in this context as well.  
  
Rose closed her eyes, slipping deeper into her linkage with the Doctor. “Yeah . . .?” she said in reply to Jack’s question.  
  
“A lot of this is the same. First, you need to find your balance . . .” Jack reached down into himself to find the still core of concentration that would provide the foundation he needed to rework his shields. Centering was a spinal reflex to him, drilled in mercilessly by his Time Agency instructors - Rose would probably need a lot of practice to match the speed of it, but just so long as they could get her re-shielded for today, that would be the main thing.  
  
“Okay, feel that?” Rose, viewing the process through both her senses and the Doctor’s, nodded. “All right, now my shields have a nice big hole in them from the link, just like yours. Doc, if you could give me a little push, so Rose can see . . .”  
  
Something that felt like an animate wall reached out and _shoved_ , not punching, but thoroughly rattling Jack’s breached shields. Surprised, Jack took one step to the side as his body tried to compensate for what his mind was feeling.  
  
_Damn, remind me never to get into a shoving match with a Time Lord . . ._ he thought.  
  
“Oh!” Rose said aloud. “I saw it all move!” She sounded happy and startled.  
  
“Yeah, you did,” Jack said, a trifle dryly, and he saw the Doctor smirk at the same moment the link fed him a faint feeling of smugness. “What I need to do is stop that movement, make the shields solid.”  
  
He reached down inside himself again, and found much more energy than he was used to — the link, he realized. Empathic connections were supposed to provide a form of mental synergy, and it certainly seemed to be true. He could feel the Doctor and Rose as warm presences on which he could draw at need, just as they could strengthen themselves with his own energy — and the three of them together would have access to far more energy than they would have working alone.  
  
Once upon a time, that would have scared him, knowing he was joined so intimately with anyone else — but not now. The settled link between the three of them was too true, too safe and joyous, for anything about it to be frightening.  
  
A last, cynical fragment of Jack’s mind countered that that feeling in itself was dangerous . . . but the rest of Jack told it to go to hell, and moved forward with the lesson.  
  
Working slowly, he shored up his defenses. Then, “Okay, Doc, push me again.”  
  
Another rattling shove, but the shields were firmer this time.  
  
Rose nodded, her eyes half closed as she concentrated. “Almost got it,” she said, a little dreamily.  
  
One more round of work, and Jack’s shields held solid against the Doctor’s push, just enough of an opening remaining to accommodate the thin thread of the link, fine as spider-silk, but unbreakable while the three of them were alive and in the same timeline.  
  
“Mmmm,” Rose murmured, an approving, sleepy sound, her eyes entirely closed as she relaxed into the Doctor’s physical and mental embrace.  
  
Jack eyed her narrowly, hoping she wasn’t falling back asleep, but her mind seemed bright and lively through the link. Just to be sure, he gave her a bit of a psionic goose, and she jumped and squeaked gratifyingly.  
  
“I was payin’ attention!” she told him, irritated. The Doctor didn’t comment, but cocked an ironic eyebrow first at her, and then at Jack.  
  
“So how are you doing, Doc? Need any stabilizing?” Jack offered.  
  
“Oh, I’m doin’ fine,” the Doctor drawled. “You can check if y’ like . . .”  
  
“Thanks, I think I will . . .” Jack aimed a hard shove at the Doctor, only to have it rebound on him with surprising force. It was like shoving at the Great Pyramid and expecting it to move. Anyone else and Jack would have been a little put out, but the last of the Time Lords was far enough out of his league for him to be philosophical about it.  
  
“Yeah, you’re good,” he said, with amusement. The Doctor snorted in reply.  
  
“Okay, then, Rose,” Jack continued brightly. “Your turn now. We’ll patch your shields the same way we did mine. You remember what I did?”  
  
“I think so, yeah,” she told him, as the Doctor gently disengaged himself and bent to pick up his saucer and teacup again.  
  
“Tell you what — come on stance, like we were sparring.”  
  
Rose did so, with a questioning look.  
  
“’As the body reflects the mind, so the mind reflects the body,’” Jack quoted, dredging up a long-ago maxim from his own training. “This should help you concentrate, get in the defensive spirit. Now . . .” He gave Rose’s shields the first push, to help highlight the weak spots, and the process began.  
  
It took Rose longer to rebuild her defenses, because all of it was new to her, but she did a very creditable job once she got a feel for what she was doing. As Jack had suspected, being physically centered helped her find her mental balance more easily.  
  
The Doctor, TARDIS diagnostics completed, finally gave up any pretense of work, and sprawled on the jump seat, watching with amusement, and occasionally offering suggestions, heightening the similarity to one of their martial arts sessions.  
  
Finally, Jack walked in an approving circle around Rose, checking her defenses and finding them solid. He didn’t need the physical motion, but it felt natural, in the same way he’d circle Rose to visually check on her stance.  
  
“Lookin’ good,” he told her, pleased.  
  
“And how’re my shields?” she asked, teasing.  
  
Jack laughed. “Nearly as nice,” he told her, feeling _much_ more relaxed now that he knew the three of them weren’t going to go walking out into Powers-knew what situation with gaping holes in their mental defenses. The chances of running into a psionic threat were few and far between, but the prospect was enough to give him shivers, all the same.  
  
Jack completed his circle and stopped in front of Rose, grinning.  
  
She shifted her weight slightly, coming into a more aggressive stance, still teasing.  
  
“It really does feel like one of our regular training sessions,” she commented, grinning back. “I keep thinkin’ I should take a swing at you . . .”  
  
Jack, in a relieved, expansive mood, came into a half-hearted guard stance opposite her. “Maybe you should,” he replied, amused. “It’s another thing you’ll need to learn — protection isn’t all defense. You saw what I did when I pushed you, right?”  
  
“Yeah . . .” Rose responded, her eyes sparkling with anticipation, weight coming forward on her toes.  
  
“Well, then,” Jack told her, “Gimme your best shot.” He braced himself, expecting a fairly solid punch, but confident in the newfound strength of his restored shields.  
  
Rose grinned at him with her tongue caught between her teeth, looking absolutely adorable . . .  
  
. . . and then the world went away.  
  
Jack floated in nothingness. Very, very vaguely, he thought there might have been a faint noise, like a heavy weight hitting metal decking, but it didn’t really register. He was in a blank, close space of no-color, no-sensation, with no memory of how he’d gotten there. It was too abrupt and total a transition to even be worrisome, merely surprising.  
  
Without warning, the unseen boundaries around him exploded outward, swept away by a greater force that brought a faint feeling of chill and the scent of rain. For a dizzy moment, the tiny kernel of Jack’s consciousness floated at the center of a boundless space filled with the impression of swirling storm clouds, slatey blue-grey and agitated.  
  
Using reflexes he wasn’t aware of, Jack opened his eyes, and Reality came rushing back. He was lying flat on the metal decking of the TARDIS’s control room (and from the soreness in his back, he’d hit it rather hard on the way down), staring up into the Doctor’s wide, worried, storm-colored eyes, while cool fingers pressed into his temples.  
  
Rose was staring at him over the Doctor’s shoulder, her eyes huge. The worried, guilty-little-girl expression on her face was so completely at odds with the massive psychic punch Jack could now begin to recall, he couldn’t help chuckling.  
  
It came out as more of a rattle, and Rose looked even more alarmed, but the Doctor blew out a relieved breath.  
  
“He’ll be fine,” the Doctor said, turning his head slightly to address Rose. “Just got the wind knocked out of him, more or less.” He turned his attention back to Jack, and continued more sharply, “And let that be a lesson to you, Captain, not to invite a full-on punch from someone who doesn’t know her own strength yet . . .” Shaking his head, he dropped his hands from Jack’s temples and stood.  
  
Rose knelt to take his place, and brushed a lock of Jack’s hair back off his forehead. “ _Are_ you okay?” she asked, still worried.  
  
Jack nodded, and couldn’t help grinning up at her, even though he could feel the start of a reaction headache beginning to spike through his forehead.  
  
“I’m fine,” he told her reaching up to brush her cheek, “but I _sure_ feel sorry for the first telepath who pisses you off, Rose Tyler!”  
  
That earned him the answering grin he was looking for, and he let her help him to his feet, and then help him in the direction of some painkillers.  


* * *

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